This invention relates to apparatus for holding a series of buckets to a rotary disc and, in particular, to a locking mechanism for preventing axial shifting of buckets slidably mounted upon a rotary support disc.
In many typical rotary machine structures, the rotating blades are supported within a disc by inserting the blade roots into complementary slots formed in the disc structure. In order to secure these side entry blades against axial movement in assembly, it has been the general practice to either peen the blade structure over the disc or dowel the blade roots into the support disc. These operations, however, involve a great deal of hand machining and are thus time consuming and costly to carry out. Similarly, once the blade is assembled, removal of the blade for replacement or repair becomes extremely difficult. Furthermore, the dampening characteristics of these prior art devices have generally been poor and balancing of the assembled structure difficult to obtain.